


Push Rewind

by deliciousshame



Series: Trope Bingo Round Four [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousshame/pseuds/deliciousshame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daiki isn't the type of person to waste time thinking about lost opportunities. Turns out he should have continued not to do that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Push Rewind

After Seirin’s victory, it haunted him through the day, that flash of Tetsu guarding that door, knowing his chance at it was lost forever, wondering what he could have done different to reach it. It was his last thought before sleep took him. 

______________

He knows something is wrong the moment he wakes up. He’s an athlete. He knows his body perfectly, and that isn’t his body. Not, after checkup, his _current_ body. 

The room he awaked to isn’t right either. He can’t find a single copy of Horikita Mai-chan’s gravure books. What he does find is his uniform and jersey from Teikou, ready for the day. 

The date is May 14. He was, at that time, a second year student at Teikou. 

Daiki decides that’s all bullshit and goes back to sleep. This dream’s just freaky. His mom comes to wake him up five minutes later. 

Pinching himself hurts. So. He’s awake. He’s in the past. His mom is urging him to leave for school, he’s gonna be late, go already! So he does.

______________

He dodges Satsuki as best as he can. She’s gonna know something is wrong way too fast, and there’s no explanation he can give her that won’t sound totally insane. 

He goes to class. It’s even more boring than it first was, so he ends up sleeping on the roof. Satsuki comes to fetch him for practice, and that’s so normal that he barely pays attention at first, but once he looks closer he can tell she’s worried, and that’s when he remembers he didn’t skip practice back then. Right, there was a time he loved it. Right. He tells her he was sleeping and goes, fast.

He enters the gym, and the familiarity hits him like a wave, but it’s nothing he can’t handle, until Kise comes to challenge him. Midorima and Murasakibara are fighting a few meters away. There’s Tetsu watching them from the side of the gym, a tiny, happy smile he hasn’t seen in forever gracing his face. Tetsu used to smile at him all the time, how come it’s been this long? Fuck, Daiki hasn’t thought this through. Shit, how is he going to be who he was that long ago? He’s changed. They all did. 

Turns out it’s easier than he thought he’d be to slip back into what was routine. He could play one-on-one with Kise in his sleep, and they don’t talk much during practice. What’s harder is the basket itself. He ends up missing shoots he would have made easily in his sleep and even trips once. Damn his shorter, weaker body. Everyone in the gym can tell there’s something wrong. Akashi, recently made captain of their team, dismisses him early. No one twitches when Tetsu follows him out. That used to be normal, them going home together. 

So did Tetsu worrying about him. “Are you all right, Aomine-kun? You were strange today.”

Fooling Tetsu is a bitch. “Yeah, about that, I was just… feeling sick today. I slept badly, too.” Come on, Tetsu, don’t question me. 

“Go to sleep early then. Take care, Aomine-kun.”

Woah, he bought it. Yes. 

______________

He was sent to the damned past, he has to get back to the present. Let’s see what the internet has to say on the subject. He checks it out on his phone, carefully not acknowledging the messages from Kise, Midorima, Momoi, Tetsu. 

Time travel is confusing as hell. How is he supposed to know if changing the past will create an alternate timeline or not? He’d be too late anyway. He’s pretty sure he never flunked out of practice before.

He disappeared just after Tetsu’s match, after realising just how much he had lost. If he believes the web, since he had that kind of revelation, he must change the past to grasp the future where Kagami’s not the one who mastered the zone. The one where Tetsu’s smile isn’t so rare that it’s worthy of notice. 

When exactly did it all started going to shit? When he started getting better? When he started skipping practice? When he was allowed to? When he destroyed Inoue? When he left Tetsu hanging, a careless decision that had so much more weight for them both then he foresaw? After that final catastrophic conversation with Tetsu?

Wow, so many alternatives for terrible life choices. People in movies have it easier. Anyway, none of those things are going to happen soon, might as well enjoy the past until he gets there, he guesses. 

______________

He’s not a good actor. Everyone can tell there’s something wrong with him, but what is he gonna tell them? Sorry, I’m from the future, by the way we’re going to explode soon, but hey, at least we’ll be the best! 

He’s not gonna lie. He’s tempted every time he sees Satsuki flinch when he does or says something strange, holding back the questions she desperately wants to ask but instinctively knows he won’t answer. She’s the one who knows him best. 

He’s also tempted every time Tetsu asks in a million different ways, and yet always accepts his non-answers without a twitch, confident that Daiki will tell him when the time comes. If he knew how little that helps his cause, he’d stop doing it. Daiki doesn’t feel like doing anything that might hurt that kind of trust. That’s a thing he’d prefer to keep, if he can manage it without messing up something else.

Wait. How can he tell if he won’t mess things up worse? What happens after? Daiki should have thought about that earlier. Time travel is hard. 

“You’re frowning, Aomine-kun. I’m surprised. It’s rare to see you thinking.”

“Ha ha ha, you’re hilarious Tetsu.” He shoves him, gently, Tetsu is fragile. 

He even missed being chirped by Tetsu. He’s pathetic. He just missed Tetsu, in general. Being with him again is just… nice. He left the present when they were just getting along better, too. The timing to this nice little time travel trip was shitty.

Oh. He’s an idiot. Let’s say he goes to practice until the end, that he manages not to hurt Tetsu, that he can spin things just right. What then? How does he knows if he still has this, Tetsu by his side, in the present? Does he go to Touou? Do Tetsu and he choose the same school? What about Kagami? Will they all end up stagnating? Won’t they? How the fuck is he supposed to know? He’s not Akashi. He can’t take account of all possibilities and decide what’s best. It’s not even his fucking place to do so. Sure, he lost things. Their team all went their separate ways. He didn’t really talk to Tetsu for months, which ended up making him pick a fight with a guy he’d never met because all he could think about when he learnt about Kagami was that Tetsu hadn’t wasted time to replace him, and then he’d played against him and he was so weak, surely _that_ couldn’t be allowed to take his place.

But he got over it. That’s all in the past now. Well, in the future. In the future’s past? Fuck this. It’s done and should be over with. He got a rival he can really fight against. He’s been seeing Tetsu more. They’re friends again. Those are things he doesn’t want to risk for some crazy risky chance at something better. 

Daiki says bye to Tetsu, strangely reluctant to let go of his shoulder, and goes back to what is his home, for the moment.

______________

Daiki never thought he’d be this happy to see the ceiling of his bedroom, his, with his stuff lying around, Mai-chan’s smile tempting him from the floor where the book rests. He checks his phone and he’s somehow been included in a text exchange between Kise and Midorima regarding some match their team had, Kaijou’s captain and a teddy bear that was Midorima’s lucky item for the day. The whole conversation makes no sense. Daiki has never been happier to see Kise and Midorima fight.

So. Now that he’s back, he can do what he really needs to do to get what he honestly wants. 

Ring. Ring. “Hello.”

“Hey, Tetsu. You free today? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of, hopefully, five fics I have until the end of the month to write for [Trope Bingo](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/). All of them should be AoKuro.


End file.
